Oh, well done, Premier Notley. You just put money in Ezra's pocket.

The Rebel has landed. By attempting to ban the online news organization from its press conferences, the Alberta government has made it a martyr for freedom of the press. And founder and “rebel in chief” Ezra Levant is loving it — all the way to the bank, no doubt.

Why Premier Rachel Notley’s advisors sought to pick this particular fight is beyond comprehension. Her offices are full of smart media and PR people, including some who’ve known Levant for decades. They’re fully aware that his favorite issue, bar none, is freedom of speech. They also know that he’s not one to flinch from a fight — that he knows how to turn hostility into opportunity. Instead of shutting him out, they created a crowdfunding dream, even after they rescinded the ban.

Levant loves to portray himself as the outsider, going where the “mainstream media” fears to tread. His website is modeled on The Blaze, former Fox News host Glenn Beck’s insanely successful website that caters to conservatives south of the border.

Levant’s definition of ‘news’ is pretty … loose. The Rebel site currently features an x-rated item on comedian Amy Schumer’s joke-stealing (which was actually quite funny). It recently ran an “expose” on a satirical, fifteen-year-old infomercial spoof featuring Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie Gregoire, pretending to sell a product that turned women’s menstrual blood into iced tea (which also was pretty funny … the infomercial, not the Rebel piece).

While the public interest in some of these stories is highly questionable, the right to talk about them is not. What the Alberta government really failed to foresee was pushback from the so-called “media party” that Levant loves to skewer.

Give the state the power to sustain journalism, and you give it the power to dictate what is, and isn’t, journalism.

Notley’s advisors probably figured that since most journalists don’t share Levant’s views, and deplore his habit of playing fast and loose with facts (Justin Trudeau was no ‘Wedding Crasher’, it turned out), they would look the other way when Rebel reporters were shown the door. Instead, they rallied to Levant’s defense — because if he’s out today, it could be someone else tomorrow.

Self-interest is a powerful motivator, but in this case the interest is not just personal — it’s professional. At a time when the media universe is imploding, and journalism jobs are being shed left and right, freedom of the press is more important than ever. In an era of uncertainty, there’s a great temptation to urge the state to throw a lifeline to flailing press organizations. It’s been suggested more than once in recent months. The fear is that a smaller number of media outlets with lower levels of resources will be ill-equipped to hold governments to account — so (paradoxically) the government is being called in to help.

The Notley episode shows how this would be a grave error. Give the state the power to sustain journalism, and you give it the power to dictate what is, and isn’t, journalism. We have one national government broadcaster in this country, which for historical and cultural reasons is still with us today. But there have been many calls over the years for the privatization of the CBC — or for a change in its funding model — on the argument that its existence leads to unfair competition and bias. This is a debate that started long before the emergence of the multi-media, million-channel universe we now inhabit.

In that universe, the news increasingly is delivered online — by anyone who can write, talk, shoot and set up a website. To shut out The Rebel because it’s an online-only platform — or because Levant once declared that he isn’t a journalist, as the Alberta government initially stated — would be to slam the door on a great many people and platforms working in newsgathering today. They’re not all equally credible. They don’t all deliver information of equal quality. But they are entitled to express themselves and access information on an equal basis. If they cross the line into libel, well, there are laws against that — something Levant, who goes through lawsuits the way other media operations go through notepads, knows all too well.

The loathing between the Alberta government and Levant is mutual — but that didn’t give Notley’s people the right to shut him out. When Prime Minister Stephen Harper stopped giving press conferences in the Parliamentary press theatre, started limiting questions at campaign stops to friendly reporters, and started picking and choosing his media vessels — favouring some, but not others — journalists went nuts. They were right to.

The Conservatives’ contempt for the news media played a large role in their eventual undoing. Notley and the NDP need to remember that.

Tasha Kheiriddin is a political writer and broadcaster who frequently comments in both English and French. After practising law and a stint in the government of Mike Harris, Tasha became the Ontario director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and co-wrote the 2005 bestseller, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. Tasha moved back to Montreal in 2006 and served as vice-president of the Montreal Economic Institute, and later director for Quebec of the Fraser Institute, while also lecturing on conservative politics at McGill University. Tasha now lives in Whitby, Ontario with her daughter Zara, born in 2009.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.